Ottawa signs on to rival emissions pact

After addressing a United
Nations session aimed at reviving Kyoto, Harper says Canada will
join the Asia-Pacific Partnership

BILL CURRY

From Tuesday's Globe and
Mail

September 25, 2007
at 4:52 AM EDT

UNITED NATIONS
— Prime Minister Stephen Harper used a United Nations conference
aimed at saving the Kyoto Protocol as a backdrop yesterday to
announce that Canada would join a rival climate change pact.

Hours after urging all countries to cut
greenhouse-gas emissions by 50 per cent in any successor to
Kyoto, Mr. Harper told reporters Canada would become the seventh
member of the Asia-Pacific Partnership, a group nicknamed the
anti-Kyoto partnership by some environmentalists.

Seeking to portray Canada as a
bridge-builder on the climate change file, Mr. Harper said he
wants to be involved in the partnership so he can coax its
members into joining a new deal under the United Nations when
Kyoto expires in 2012.

The Asia-Pacific Partnership, created
last year by Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and the
United States, has been criticized for lacking the mandatory
targets contained in Kyoto. Together, the six countries account
for nearly half the world's greenhouse-gas emissions.

Source

Mr. Harper has hinted previously that
Canada would like to join the partnership. His announcement
yesterday that this would happen at a meeting in New Delhi next
month followed a speech in which he called for a "flexible,
balanced" new UN plan to halve greenhouse-gas emissions from
their 2006 levels by 2050. His government's plan calls for
Canada to cut emissions by 60 to 70 per cent by 2050.

"It's critical that ... all major
emitters have binding targets, and one of the reasons it's
important for Canada to participate in the Asia-Pacific
Partnership is these are the major emitters on the planet," Mr.
Harper told reporters. "Those are the discussions we want to be
involved in because these are the people that have to get
involved in an effective global protocol, or we won't have such
a protocol."

Mr. Harper, who has been criticized for
focusing on targets that are several decades away, told
reporters that medium-term targets are also required.

"It's step by step," he said. "My view
is there has to be a long-term target but there also will have
to be milestones along the way to reach that target. That's my
view, otherwise you won't have an effective protocol. We've got
a long way to go to get there. We didn't get there with Kyoto.
We've got to have, this time, a protocol that gets us there."

Cutting emissions by 50 per cent by 2050
is favoured by the European Union, but was opposed by the United
States when the Group of Eight industrialized nations said it
should be given "serious consideration" at their meeting in
June. However, because Mr. Harper uses 2006 as the baseline,
rather than Kyoto's 1990, it is not as onerous as the
50-per-cent reductions called for by European Union nations.

United Nations Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon had summoned world leaders to New York yesterday for a
one-day "high-level" session, where he urged them to give their
officials the green light to negotiate a Kyoto extension.

Mr. Harper did not mention the Kyoto
Protocol in his address, instead calling for something
different.

"There is an emerging consensus on the
need for a new, effective and flexible climate change framework,
one that commits all the world's major emitters to real targets
and concrete action against global greenhouse-gas emissions," he
said.

U.S. President George W. Bush had been
expected to address the Kyoto meeting yesterday, but opted
instead to only attend a private leaders' dinner. The President
has invited 15 of the world's largest greenhouse-gas emitters to
Washington later this week for a two-day summit on climate
change, in which Environment Minister John Baird will
participate.

Mr. Harper's efforts to portray Canada
as a bridge between Kyoto countries and non-Kyoto countries
received a none-too-veiled rebuke yesterday from a young
Canadian who addressed the main assembly.

Catherine Gauthier, 18, speaking on
behalf of a host of environmental organizations, said the next
UN climate change meeting this December in Bali must extend
Kyoto.

"There are spin doctors in certain
capitals that will try to convince you otherwise with their
'diplomatic breakthroughs,' 'bridges' and 'complementary
processes.' But there is only one road to a safe climate and it
leads to Bali," said Ms. Gauthier.

It's an
agreement you have when you are not having an
agreement. Mr. Harper is signing on to being another
puppet voice for the American anti agreement. First
Canada agreed to the Kyoto Protocol and now
primarily because it does not suit US interests Mr.
Harper wants to join John Howard in being another
puppet of American foreign policy. Just how much
brown nosing does Mr. Harper think he has to do to
win that acceptance down south? Its doing indirectly
what cannot be done directly, its a common trend
that encourages a corrupt mentality and a lack of
principles. Mr. Harper has a more serious issue
right here in Canada and thats the declining birth
rate. Perhaps Mr. Harper should ask why? Its because
Canada has failed to legislate a mandatory
presumption of equal parenting. Another issue Mr.
Harper and the attorney general of Ontario need to
deal with is officers of the court who fabricate
evidence and commit fraud and obstruction of justice
in court. Its permanently alienating children from
their fathers. Parliaments failure to have a legal
presumption for equal parenting after divorce
encourages real crime in family court. It encourages
feminist lawyers to fabricate evidence and knowingly
commit criminal offences in court such as fraud and
obstruction of justice. A classic example of such a
lawyer is Lesley Kendall from the Kingston law firm
Cunningham, Swan, Carty, Little & Bohham. Lesley
Kendall fabricated an affidavit with a Kingston
Police Officer that she was threatened by a father
to gain a lifetime restraining order banishing a
father from the City of Kingston to get around an
order of Justice W.G. Beatty who ordered an
expedited trial of custody when presented with
evidence of F R A U D. Lesley Kendall knew she was
arguing who own fraudulent evidence to cover up F R
A U D. She obstructed justice, and then obtained
costs orders of around $20,000 to prevent any
further litigation regarding the child’s best
interests. www.OttawaMensCentre.com